Fiber Monitoring Using a Sub-Carrier Band in a Sub-Carrier Multiplexed Radio-Over-Fiber Transmission System for Applications in Analog Mobile Fronthaul

In this paper, we describe an efficient method for monitoring fiber links utilizing sub-carrier multiplexing. By assigning a void sub-carrier frequency band for monitoring purposes, the method reuses the data transmitter without any impact on data transmission and provides capability of in-service reflectometry measurements of fiber optic lines with 10-m spatial resolution and 1.0-dB fault detection sensitivity. Its promising properties and performance enable potential application in emerging networks such as relatively short distance analogue mobile fronthaul.